Charter Panel Defends Push For Nonpartisan Elections

By JONATHAN P. HICKS

Published: August 14, 2003

The Charter Revision Commission, confronting criticism of its push for nonpartisan elections, issued a 42-page rebuttal yesterday to claims that the switch would lower voter participation.

The response to critics from the outside came amid signs of dissension within the commission's ranks. Bill Lynch, a deputy mayor in the Dinkins administration and one of the 11 members of the commission, said that the panel was moving too quickly and that its focus had been too narrow.

Mr. Lynch, who has also held leadership positions within the Democratic Party, criticized the commission as being so single-minded about advocating nonpartisan elections that it had given little serious study to other methods of increasing voter participation, like same-day registration, lengthening the voting hours beyond one day and allowing noncitizens to vote. His criticisms were first reported in The New York Observer.

''We're doing this far too quickly, and I'm very concerned,'' Mr. Lynch said yesterday. ''Just having nonpartisan elections alone is not the way to do this.''

The controversy emerged as the commission continued to press forward on a measure to revamp the process for electing the mayor, the city comptroller, the public advocate, the 5 borough presidents and the 51 members of the City Council.

The plan the commission is embracing would eliminate political party primaries before a general election. Instead, there would be two rounds of elections. The first one would reduce the field of candidates to the two with the most votes. Those two would then oppose each other in an election in November.

The commission is planning to vote at the end of this month on the final language that will go before the voters in a citywide referendum in November. Commission officials said that Mr. Lynch's criticisms were unlikely to alter that plan.

Many critics have pointed to studies showing that places that already have nonpartisan elections also have diminished voter participation -- the opposite effect of the switch from the one promoted by commission chairman Frank Macchiarola and other commission members and staff.

The commission spent nearly 90 minutes at a press briefing yesterday refuting some of the studies.

''A third of the registered voters in New York cannot participate in the process,'' said Alan Gartner, the executive director of the commission, referring to voters without a party registration. ''And this would change that. It would open the process up to everyone.'' He added that nonpartisan elections were conducted in 41 of the nation's 50 largest cities.

The commission's report stated, ''In fact, 10 nonpartisan cities had higher rates of turnout in their most recent elections than New York City.'' That figure of 10 is artificially low, Mr. Gartner argued, because the municipal election in 2001 had an unusually high turnout.

But even commission members and staff members concede that it is difficult to determine the impact of nonpartisan elections on New York through comparison with other cities because of New York's unique size, political history and other characteristics.

That uncertainty is being seized upon by Democratic leaders, who have insisted that eliminating party primaries would hurt the electoral prospects of black, Hispanic and Asian candidates.

Mr. Lynch, in a memorandum he wrote to commission members that was released yesterday, refuted the very premise for moving a partisan -- overwhelmingly Democratic -- city like New York toward nonpartisan elections.

''By adopting this new system, the commission is asking voters to engage in a whole new and daunting process of discerning what candidates stand for,'' Mr. Lynch said. ''How is the individual voter supposed to obtain this information?''

Mr. Lynch also complained that alternatives were not considered. In the press briefing, the staff of the commission said that Mr. Lynch's proposals would require legislative approval, a long and uncertain process.

Mr. Gartner also said that it was more important for the panel to do what it was empowered to do by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg: consider the effect of nonpartisanship in city elections.

Mr. Gartner and other staff members said that after months of hearings, they had determined that the proposed nonpartisan system would enable 700,000 voters who are not affiliated with a political party to have a greater role in determining who candidates might be. They also argued that minority candidates would have enhanced political opportunities, citing examples of some cities, like Atlanta, which elected its first black mayor after a move to nonpartisan elections.

Still, the figures provided by the commission did not include any analysis of how voter turnout had been affected in various cities in elections immediately after those municipalities moved to nonpartisan elections. Commission and staff members said that that was because many cities with nonpartisan elections had changed methods before World War II, and that little data was available.

The state Democratic Party, meanwhile, issued a press release yesterday criticizing the commission in the form of 10 questions.

In one, the Democrats ask why the commission focuses on the 50 largest cities to show the frequency with which minority mayors are elected.

''An analysis of more than 400 cities with a population over 50,000 by the National League of Cities shows that partisan cities have a better rate of electing minority mayors than those that have eliminated party primaries,'' the statement said.